What stands out in the British Iraq Inquiry (Chilcot) report is the sidestepping of the war crime issue. But then it was carefully placed outside its scope. This omission aside, the indictments remain, damning and morally appalling. Thus it confirms the war was launched on a false pretext. Major General Michael Laurie made plain in his testimony that Tony Blair’s notorious “dossier” was designed to persuade Members of Parliament to vote for the war: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war rather than setting out the available evidence.” In this, he echoes CIA Director George Tenet’s notorious “slam dunk case.”

So it was, a war based on hyped up intelligence instead of objective assessment; a fact clearly not overlooked by the inquiry when it concluded in its damming assessment (judgment?), that the invasion was not a “last resort” because peaceful options had not been exhausted.

If, in the judgment of the inquiry, the war was not a “last resort”, then it contravenes Article 33 (Chapter VI: Pacific Settlement of Disputes) of the UN Charter which states the parties “shall, first of all, seek a solution by inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.” These actions were far from exhausted leading to the unstated (by the inquiry) conclusion that the belligerents were guilty of a war of aggression. It was the Nuremberg Tribunal that famously called such a war, ” … not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

‘If only I had known’ or ‘I stand by my decision based on the facts at hand at the time.’ These protestations too have been knocked flat by the Chilcot report: “We do not agree that hindsight is required” for there were clear warnings of what has occurred. It was likely that the threat from al-Qaida, squashed and kept out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein, would increase — it has morphed into the ISIS colossus where the former regime’s capabilities are now evident.

To the unjustified certainty of WMD, the stated casus belli, the report adds further: “Despite warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.” The war and, in particular, the bungled occupation have ignited sectarianism and terrorism across the region and beyond.